Fostering critical thinking can be an effective method to reduce people’s tendency to believe in conspiracy theories, an experimental study by University College Cork (UCC) psychologists has found.
The study is the first to directly compare methods used to reduce people’s belief in unfounded conspiracy theories.
It finds many well-established interventions “have either no effect or a negative effect on participants’ ability to correctly reason about conspiracy theories”.
Conspiracy theories have transitioned from fringe phenomena to forces shaping political discourse and public opinion worldwide. They are unverified claims or explanations seeking to connect unrelated events or actions in a way that implies secret or covert co-ordination.
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They often involve powerful organisations or individuals conspiring to achieve a hidden agenda. For instance, a common conspiracy theory is that Covid-19 is a hoax created by governments and pharmaceutical companies to control and manipulate the population.
Conspiracy theories are often presented in a compelling manner, appealing to a natural fondness for stories. They are, however, not necessarily false as real examples of conspiracies do exist.
Although holding conspiracy beliefs can have a detrimental impact on personal health, social connection, public health and public democratic citizenship, little research has been conducted to test methods that could reduce people’s belief in them.
The UCC researchers found existing methods to reduce belief in conspiracy theories “often encourage people to simply dismiss all conspiracies rather than discerning which information is likely to be true from the majority that is not”.
They identified a new approach that improves people’s critical thinking and allows participants to distinguish between plausible and implausible conspiracy theories more effectively.
The study, published in Advances in Psychology, used a tool called the “critical thinking about conspiracies assessment” (CTAC) rather than only measuring belief in specific conspiracies such as the faking of the moon landings.
CTAC focuses on how people reason about conspiracy theories versus whether they merely believe in them, which gave researchers a better understanding of their underlying thought process.
Critical thinking skills and an analytical mindset are the most effective means of challenging conspiracy beliefs, said lead researcher Cian O’Mahony of UCC’s School of Applied Psychology.
[ Significant minority of Irish people believe conspiracy theories, research showsOpens in new window ]
“Events like Watergate and Tuskegee Syphilis Study show us that sometimes conspiracies can happen. It is important that we are not just teaching people to reject everything labelled as a conspiracy theory,” he said.
“Our study introduces a new approach that encourages careful judgment and cautions against automatic scepticism. Our new intervention, which reminds people not to reject an idea just because it’s labelled a conspiracy and discouraged blind scepticism, successfully helped participants better distinguish between plausible and implausible conspiracy theories.”
Their results suggested current techniques used widely by psychologists improve people’s critical thinking about implausible conspiracy theories but don’t help as much with plausible ones.
“As such, these interventions may be merely encouraging blind rejection of all conspiracy theories,” he said.
The study was funded by the Irish Research Council and Google.
